Refunds

Mercleo Events lets you issue refunds two ways: inline from a ticket card on the registration detail sheet, or through the dedicated Refunds tab. Both paths fire a Stripe refund on your connected account — the difference is whether an approval step is involved.

Paid tickets require a connected Stripe account before any refund path is available. If you haven't connected Stripe yet, see Connecting Stripe.

Two ways to issue refunds

The inline refund fires Stripe immediately with no approval queue. Open a registration, find the ticket card, open its menu, and choose Refund…. The charge hits Stripe the moment you confirm.

The Refunds tab workflow has a two-step approve cycle: a refund request is created first (pending), then you explicitly approve it. Stripe fires on approval. This path also handles attendee-initiated requests, which land in the Pending filter for your review.

Inline refund from the ticket dropdown

Open a registration detail sheet, locate the ticket you want to refund, and open the ticket card's menu. Choose Refund… to open the refund dialog.

The dialog pre-fills the Amount field with the amount the attendee paid. Edit it to issue a partial refund, or leave it to refund in full. The Reason field is optional and stored for your records. Confirm to send the refund.

The inline refund option appears on any ticket where the attendee paid more than zero — including cancelled tickets. It is not available while a pending transfer is in progress.

Issuing refund requests from the Refunds tab

Open your event and go to the Refunds tab. The tab shows all refund requests for the event. Use the filter tabs — All / Pending / Approved / Denied / Failed / Withdrawn — to narrow the list. The tab defaults to Pending.

To create a new refund request, click New refund request. The dialog asks you to:

1. Select a registration from the dropdown (only confirmed, paid registrations appear).
2. Choose Full or Partial as the refund type.
3. If Partial, enter the amount to refund (cannot exceed what the attendee paid).
4. Add an optional reason or notes for your records.

Submitting creates a row in Pending status. To complete the refund, find the row and click Approve in the Actions column. An approval dialog lets you confirm the amount and add notes for the attendee before the charge fires.

Attendee-initiated refund requests

Attendees can submit a refund request from their confirmation page — the token-gated page they receive after registering. They do not need a Mercleo account to do this.

When an attendee submits a request, it appears in the Pending filter on your Refunds tab. From there you can approve or deny it. The attendee receives an email notification either way — see Approval and denial emails below.

If your event has a refund deadline configured, Mercleo rejects attendee requests submitted after that date. Requests already in Pending are not retroactively closed when a deadline passes.

Full vs partial refunds

A full refund returns exactly what the attendee paid. A partial refund is any amount you choose up to the amount paid. There is no pro-rata calculation — you enter the dollar amount directly.

You can disable partial refunds for an event using the Partial refunds allowed toggle in the event's refund policy settings. When turned off, attendees cannot request partial refunds from their confirmation page, and the Partial option is hidden in both operator refund dialogs.

Refund policy fields on the event

Each event has a refund policy section in its settings. Three fields control how refunds work:

• Refund deadline — an ISO date after which attendee-submitted requests are automatically rejected. Operator-initiated refunds are not blocked by this deadline.
• Cancellation fee — a fixed amount deducted from the refund. Set this if your policy retains a processing or admin fee.
• Partial refunds allowed — a boolean toggle. When off, partial refunds are blocked for this event.

Approval and denial emails

Mercleo sends the attendee a notification email when you approve or deny a refund request:

• Approved — a refund-approved email is sent with the refund amount and any notes you added during approval.
• Denied — a refund-denied email is sent, including the reason if you provided one.

These emails are sent best-effort. If the send fails, the error is logged and the refund or denial still completes — the email failure does not block the status change.

When a Stripe refund fails

If the Stripe API call fails at the point of approval, the refund request is marked Failed and the error message is recorded in the request's admin notes. No money moves.

Use the Failed filter on the Refunds tab to surface these rows. Common causes include an insufficient Stripe balance, a charge that is too old to refund, or a disconnected Stripe account. Resolve the underlying Stripe issue, then re-approve the request.